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The Fool on the Hill: Bill Gaede and the Folly of Mathematical Physics

You've probably never heard of Bill Gaede. In the field of Physics, the typical names of admiration are Einstein, Newton, and Bohr. More recently it's been rock star scientists like Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and Neil deGrasse Tyson crooning the gospel of pop Physics for mainstream audiences. But despite the glamorous aura surrounding these renowned individuals, it is Gaede who is perhaps the most striking of all.

Argentinian by birth, Gaede's vocation was not in scientific academia but computer engineering. Due to his South American roots, in the 1980's he became involved with operatives from the Cuban government. Working in the United States, Gaede compiled technological information from his then-employer, computer chip maker AMD, for delivery to his Cuban contacts. When his role was revealed to the CIA, he was recruited to work as a double-agent for the American side.

Gaede eventually went rogue in the early '90's, stealing manufacturing specs from the Intel corporation, which he later provided (sold?) to foreign governments. In the end, Gaede was arrested and spent nearly three years in prison before being deported. Say what you will of his ethics or morals, for more than ten years the man's life was an honest-to-God spy thriller.

Now in permanent exile from the US, Gaede has become another kind of provocateur. He is an establishment agitator, a lo-fi Youtube crackpot extraordinaire. On his obscure website and little-seen videos, Gaede seeks to debunk the tenets of accepted Physics doctrine, while also putting forth his own counter- theories of physical phenomena.

Gaede counters mainstream Physics with what he calls a rational alternative. His contention is that modern particle Physics is a colossal fraud,a claim which he asserts on several bases.

Math cannot explain Physics:

Those who've taken high school Physics know the vast majority of coursework revolves around math and formulas. Math has served as the essential basis of Physics since ancient astronomy, through Issac Newton, to quantum mechanics of today. While math is excellent for describing our physical observations, it cannot explain the invisible physical architecture behind it all.

Imagine a rock shot from a catapult. Mathematical equations can predict with incredible accuracy the flight of the rock under various conditions. But now imagine that the rock and catapult cannot be seen, as is the case at both the extreme micro and macro- physical levels. Math cannot tell us what was flying, nor how it was propelled. One equation could describe the movement of numerous different objects. Gaede uses this diagram to make the point:

Physics is working backwards. Formulas are developed to describe movement, and then used retroactively to explain what has moved. This is a massive oversight. Although the structure of the atomic world is still invisible to us, mathematical physicists have arbitrarily taken the point/ particle as the fundamental physical building-block, beacuse it is the simplest, most basic unit with which to model their equations.

The result is that everything in Physics has become a particle— the atom, the photon (light),space-time, protons, neutrons, and electrons. And now even these particles are supposedly made of smaller particles, such as quarks or neutrinos. As experimentation and further mathematics disprove the various particle models, physicists double down into irrationality, positing head-scratching theories like particle/wave duality in order to protect their theoretical frameworks.

Cannot do Physics without physical objects:

Perhaps it should seem obvious, but the obvious has been lost as Physics has abandoned common sense. It has become acceptable to explain tangible, physical activity using abstract, intangible concepts. The vocabulary of Physics is dominated by these kinds of purely conceptual terms: energy, mass, time, force, field, charge. None of these are physical objects. But Physics must be done with objects, as it is a science of material reality. If you cannot draw a picture of the thing being discussed, then you are doing Philosophy, not Physics.

It becomes clear, then, that physical explanations which employ conceptual terms are not really explanations at all. Despite what textbooks may say, science does not have a true understanding of the mechanics behind common physical phenomena like gravitational pull or magnetism.

Replace the word magnetic “field” with “magic bubble” and the explanation remains the same. The "field" is not a physical object any more than a "magic force field". Without a tangible physical model (i.e. How does one magnet physically touch the other from a distance),Physicists are simply arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Einstein's Theory of Relativity is the accepted mainstream model of gravitation in Physics, and its equations are excellent for calculating the gravitational movement of physical bodies. However, the physical model it presents is irrational because it relies on the conceptual term "space" as its lynchpin.

Supposedly, massive objects such as the Earth bend space around themselves, which explains why the moon doesn't fly away. But space is not an object. An object has shape and dimensions. You can draw it. Space is necessarily "that which does not have shape." Space is the area between objects. It is exactly the antithesis of an object. How can you bend something non-corporeal, something which had no shape to begin with?

This problem crops up again in regard to the physical nature of light. This is a particular annoyance to Gaede, and seems to be one of his biggest pet peeves. To say that light is a wave is a misnomer, because a wave is what something does, not what something is. Water can wave, a flag can wave, but a wave is not something in and of itself. Wave is a concept. So if light is said to wave, what is it that is waving?

Definitions are not consistent:

Mathematical physicists have worked themselves into a corner. As their theories become increasingly convoluted and irrational, their explanations take on an ad-hoc nature in order to paper over the various plot holes.

Take for instance the structure of the atom. First we have the basic planetary model that we all learned as children, with electron beads orbiting a proton-neutron nucleus. This image of the atom is still taught in schools, even though scientific consensus agrees that this is not an accurate depiction. The planetary model persists because it is useful to explain many, but not all, observable characteristics of the atom.

Additional versions of the atom are then added on top of the planetary model in order to account for other physical behaviors. We have the electron-wave/ ribbon model, which stretches the electron around the nucleus like rings around the planet Saturn. We also have the electron probability cloud, wherein the electron exists randomly within a certain range of the nucleus, and upon observation will appear at a given location according to mathematical chance.

None of these theories alone can explain the entirety of known atomic behavior. But instead of wiping the slate clean and starting again, mathematical physicists have adopted them all simultaneously, and will switch from one to the other as the situation dictates. With straight faces they will tell you that the electron is both a particle and a wave, then shrug and say, “Boy, the world sure is a crazy place!”

What's more, it becomes impossible to disprove the theories when they are allowed to change at any moment. It's almost insulting, really. If a theory is challenged, the “scientist” is allowed to say the truth can be one, both, or neither. So much for scientific rigor and integrity.

Peer- reviewed, establishment gatekeepers:

Shape-shifting scientific theories are not the only obstacle to intelligent discourse in modern Physics. The peer- review system of publishing, meant to safeguard against the dissemination of unsound science, has instead resulted in the entrenchment of irrational theories.

Gaede makes the analogy: imagine a paper is written disproving the existence of God, the publication of which depends on passing a review board comprised of three Christians, two Muslims, and a Hindu. What are the chances of this paper ever seeing the light of day?

Scientists are people like any other, and are vulnerable to the pressures of career, income, prestige, and fame. Their livelihoods are at stake. If new science emerges that disproves their life's work, they become both fraudulent and expendable. It's cognitive dissonance, not conspiracy theory. Professional physicists truly believe in the veracity of establishment Physics (Gaede calls it a religion).

Meanwhile, mainstream publications such as Nature or Science magazines exist first and foremost as entertainment outlets. Their primary goal is to sell subscriptions, to an audience raised on the science fiction of black holes, dark matter, time travel, and quantum mechanics. Neil deGrasse Tyson's popular Cosmos mini-series may dazzle the mind, but it contains about as much science fact as Star Trek.

This is how scientific theories become entrenched, even when the evidence starts to turn against them. Physics has become schizophrenic as its conflicting theories argue with itself. The grand vision in modern Physics is to marry Einstein's model of gravitation with quantum mechanics into one "Unified Theory" of the universe.

On this front the physicists are fighting a losing battle. Remember that quantum = quantized, meaning discrete, individual point/ particles. It is simply impossible to model a phenomenon of pull (gravity) with colliding billiard balls. But try they will, as physicists speculate the existence of the graviton, you guessed it, a quantized unit/ particle of gravity, which delivers negative momentum; i.e. a ball that runs into you and pushes you back in the direction from which it just came.

All we can do is shake our heads. Here in Fakenation, this is what contemporary physicists have become— essentially Dungeon Masters of their own made-up D&D world. If what's happening in Physics is occuring across the board of scientific disciplines, we could be entering a dark time indeed for scientific knowledge.